Nightmares
by Cliodhna
Summary: 'In my time, nightmares walked among us, walked and danced, skewering victims in plain sight, laying their fears and worst desires out for everyone to see. This to make us laugh.' An account by Illyria of how Nightmares came to be as they are. R&R.


Disclaimer: As usual, everything belongs to Joss Whedon.

A/N: This is a really weird fic, to be honest, that's been lingering in my mind for a while, so I thought I'd get it on paper and see what everyone else thinks. It might be too out there. Warning for vague mutilations, torture, and corporeal nightmares… and so on.

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'I wonder whom they angered so to merit such a fate…'

I am taller than the tallest mountain. I am achingly beautiful, immeasurably graceful. But I am disentranced. I seek out an amusement, something to ease my fatigue for a spell. I spring, I soar from heavenly dimension to hell and back. Wonders meet me, glittering landscapes filled with extraordinary beings, ghostly lagoons, whole planets fluttering with ardent zeal… and still, I am unsatisfied. I float through time itself, and nothing will sate my desire.

In the distance – I can sense it rather than see it – there is a ripple. A slight blur of reality. I abscond, and appear at the scene. And at once, I feel the divine pleasure of ennui leaving me.

It is a Nightmare. It has trapped some lesser creature in its midst, and they are encapsulated in its grasp. They writhe and flit and moan, I applaud and scream and the nightmare is smoke and vapour, and then hard and cold, fierce and loving, insensate and emotion, pouring into my mind, the creature's mind; I crow, I ripple, the creature is churning, his fears materialising around him, inconsequential to me but deliciously horrific for him. The Nightmare caws, it laps up the fear, it dances in the sick pleasure it gains and screams in derision and the cowering creature at its feet. It is death, it is life inside death, it is unstoppable until it is sated. The blackness whirls and spins, whorls of fear and pain curl from the creature, staining the cerulean skies with blood and ecstasy. I roar, the Nightmare pulls another string and the creature begs for mercy. The Nightmare does not grant him, but skewers him once more, with gleeful viciousness. The creature howls one last time. The Nightmare holds him in a sphere of pain in the sky, and he is finally, fatally still. The Nightmare caterwauls, and drops the creature to the ground, a sticky stain upon the landscape, nothing more than a vague, pleasant memory for me and a satisfying meal for the Nightmare. There is nothing left for me here. I depart, and the Nightmare walks on to find its next victim.

xXx

The Nightmare cowers. There is a greater power holding it and it is afraid, for the first time in its life. It screams, blackness oozing from its form like lava from a volcano. Shapes flit from it, and it grows small. The greatness holding it was once tiny, but it has grown. The greatness, once inconsequential, has bided its time until almost all of the Old Ones have destroyed each other. Now imbued with stolen power, it defiles the thing that once humiliated it for the pleasure of the Old Ones. The Wolf, the Ram and the Hart, no longer so low on the hierarchy, now something of a dominant player, took its revenge on the Nightmare. I am long since dead, and know nothing of this torment.

xXx

The plague of man grows, and The Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart grow with it. My Kingdom crumbles and Nightmares are kept hidden.

xXx

When the Nightmare awakes, it rejoices. It harbours the belief that it remains free to mutilate and torture victims for the pleasure of its betters. It stretches its many limbs and searches for its victim. But the Nightmare is constrained. It cannot move but through the simple plain the humans remain on in their subconscious. It howls in pain, for it is used to skipping dimensions and having its pick of many millions of victims with horrific fears and terrible desires. It can only see but one thing; the mind of the weak, pitiful human it is trapped inside. His fears are boring and inconsequential to a being that once crushed creatures under the weight of a thousand sunsets, who bathed itself in the blood of a shimmering battlefield laid with the corpses of a million warriors. The Nightmare plays out man's fears, man's stupid, insignificant fears, until man dies, and the Nightmare, once glorious, once beautifully, painfully powerful, dies with him.

xXx

The Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart basks in the comfort of man's law, and builds an empire of evil, but never forgets to punish those who once tortured it. I am reborn into this sick, hateful world, disgusted by the defilement I see. Lies, truths, intangible things that once filled entire dimensions to amuse me…now the playthings of humans. Nightmares live, born into the subconscious of every human on the wasteland that was once the Old Ones' territory. And then they die. And Wolfram and Hart will live on, power in evil, and truly, incredibly, the last Old Ones left.

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